


Cleave or Shatter

by Drakey



Series: Truth [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Anakin Skywalker Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, F/M, Gen, No Dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:33:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23680870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drakey/pseuds/Drakey
Summary: Obi-Wan contemplates the aftermath of Sidious' defeat
Relationships: Asajj Ventress/Quinlan Vos, Implied Kit Fisto/Aayla Secura, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Series: Truth [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1700803
Comments: 4
Kudos: 114





	Cleave or Shatter

**Author's Note:**

> Dialogue-free pieces like this are likely to happen throughout this series.

Obi-Wan Kenobi didn't like it at first. Three months of scrambling to dismantle Palpatine's legacy of war was, to say the least, hard on everyone. Shaak Ti and Mace Windu had worked together to decipher the secrets of the clones, and then a mass removal of the control chips that would have forced them to follow any order if Palpatine gave it, a move that took huge portions of the clone army out of comission as the procedure was performed.

Palpatine's plans were unearthed, one at a time, and picked apart around him, but Obi-Wan had the job he was certain would be hardest. The Council needed him to help with Jedi leaving the Order.

Anakin wasn't the last. 

Ki Adi Mundi and all of the other Cereans in the Order left. They were easy to settle, welcomed with open arms by their own people.

Master Rahm Kota took a small contingent of those who wrestled with their temptatons to the Dark Side, and they all joined the Guardians of the Whills, who approached the whole situation as though it was funny. Obi-Wan had to admit that Kota and his ex-Jedi seemed happier on Jedha.

Ninety-seven left the Order for love. They were easy enough to relocate as well, except for the five who were leaving with only other Jedi, and therefore had no place to live.

More than seven hundred left the Order because they could no longer bear to be a part of it. Obi-Wan watched people, some of whom he knew very well indeed, leave the Temple with their heads bowed. Aayla Secura explained that she was mourning Kit Fisto, and she went to Ryloth with a pair of lightsabers: hers, and Fisto's. Huulik, a Rodian who had fought alongside him and Anakin sometimes, went to family on Rodia, and Cin Drallig surprised everyone by leaving in order to become one of the Farmer Monks of Horack.

Among all the tearful goodbyes and the pain of seeing his fellow Jedi mentally broken and physically brutalized, though, Obi-Wan found joy.

The easiest joy was in the reunions: Anakin to Ahsoka and Rex, only twelve days after the fall of Sidious, began a wave of little reunions that the Order would never have allowed. Huulik was met on Rodia by an overjoyed niece, and Obi-Wan was uplifted by the sight. Former Jedi were meeting their families, sometimes for the first time, and the anguish that the Order could not cure was often soothed by the simple truth that the former Jedi was welcome.

Obi-Wan also found joy, only a few days after Anakin returned to Coruscant with Ahsoka and Rex, in Padme's twins. Luke and Leia were beautiful, and shone in the Force like beacons. Padme had, in fact, barely survived the ordeal, but multiple Jedi and the best medical facilities in the galaxy helped her pull through. She was radiant, holding the children, and when she revealed their father to the public, her charm and confidence made integrating former Jedi into society that much easier.

So three months went by, and Obi-Wan was floored by how much better everything was than he expected. He recalled Yoda's words in the Council Chamber, about cutting the crystal so it wouldn't shatter. Somehow, the process had seemed so much more tragic when it all stretched out ahead of them. Instead, for most, there was a sense of completion and rightness to it. 

When Obi-Wan accompanied Master Drallig to Horack, the Force seemed to fold the old weapon master into its embrace, like he'd always been meant to be there, farming a million hectares of waving purple grain instead of sending promising young Jedi off to war. While the Guardians of the Whills were laughing over the additions to their ranks, the Force seemed to be _celebrating_ the arrival of Kota and his cohort. Every Jedi that left hand-in-hand with a love found in the wider galaxy or forged in the fires of battle was surrounded by such a dizzyingly pure aura of rightness that Obi-Wan was genuinely a little surprised parades didn't spontaneously form around them.

But some of it was just pain. 

There was the day he dropped Aayla Secura on Ryloth. She wept bitterly into his shoulder, and he held her, because he'd known she and Kit were close, but he'd never imagined it was like this. He'd loved Kit, too, of course. It had been impossible not to love the Nautolan, whose kindness and wit were infectious. He cried, too.

There were the awful nights with Quinlan, while his friend debated between leaving the Order and taking a seat on the Council. Of Obi-Wan's childhood friends, Quinlan was really all that remained, and there was a closeness that came from that, but Quinlan wept still for the death, all too recent, of Assaj Ventress. When Quinlan eventually decided to take his seat on the Council, Obi-Wan was almost disappointed, but his friend's family was, he knew, extremely complicated and would probably interfere in his life if he left; ultimately, the relative simplicity of the Order was the deciding factor.

There was that gut-wrenching loss unique to seeing off a Jedi whose life had been spared only by the slimmest of technicalities. Some were paralyzed, or relied on heavy life support to survive, and felt that they could no longer benefit the Order. None of them had asked for what happened, and that it had happened at all was a tragedy. Obi-Wan spent countless hours at bedsides, holding hands that trembled in pain or grew weak far too quickly.

There was the hurt of Jedi who left because they could no longer escape the war, Jedi whose minds were plagued by the constant remembering, who cried at the sight of blasters, or the sounds of the fireworks on Life Day, who trembled in fear if there was a starfighter nearby, or certain animals, or even certain species of sentients.

But Obi-Wan's position helped him with the things that came after those first three months, too. When the Senate drew down the numbers of the Grand Army and voted, under a huge amount of pressure from former Jedi, to offer an honorable retirement from the military to all of the clones, Obi-Wan had already solved a lot of the problems of relocating huge numbers of people. The Clones were a matter of scale, but the galaxy was a big place.

When Padme negotiated the final peace between the Republic and the Separatists, Obi-Wan's experience with the Jedi and the Clones helped him to spot some of the issues. A thousand systems or so stayed separatist, but suddenly there was trade and travel, and it could all have been a huge shock to galactic culture, but they handled it.

Picking up after a war was never easy, but the Clone War was on another level. The whole galaxy had been shattered, peace and familiarity smashed and ruined, and for a time it seemed that the Republic would fall apart completely under the weight of Sidious' lie, because, after all, the war was a lie, built on lies, to tell lies.

Obi-Wan Kenobi thought, at first, that it would be a complete disaster, but a year in, it all seemed so much more intact than he'd feared. Maybe, Obi-Wan thought, it would all be okay.

It was possible, right?


End file.
